Skip to footer

8 new baseball books for Opening Day and beyond

Like baseball bats aligned alluringly in dugout bat racks, there’s something that cries out “Read me” about the baseball literature displayed in book shops whenever a new season rolls around. These selections are among the latest varied offerings.

1. "101 Baseball Places to See Before You Strike Out," by Josh Pahigian

  • By Ross Atkin

This second edition of a book first published in 2010 highlights 25 new sites that make desirable destinations for the serious baseball fan. These include museums, shrines, ballparks, the Black Sox trial courthouse in Chicago, and the Jackie Robinson Trail in Pasadena, Calif. 

Here’s an excerpt from “101 Baseball Places”:

“Thanks to its unique location, the Roger Maris Museum in Fargo, North Dakota, is one of the game’s least heralded and yet most accessible gems. You walk through the checkout line of Sears and into the main gallery of the West Acres Mall. You pass a Payless Shoe Store, and then a Nails Pro, and then you’re confronted with the entrance of a wonderful little museum that makes you suddenly feel like you’re twelve years old again and sitting on your grandpa’s porch listening to the familiar twang of the local play-by-play announcer as twilight fades to full night and the game wends its way through the middle innings. Anytime the mall is open – which is every day of the year except for Easter, Thanksgiving, and Christmas – you can visit this surprisingly comprehensive tribute to a hometown hero the local folks never forgot.”

1 of 8
Mark Sappenfield
Editor

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

Subscribe to insightful journalism

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.